Manchester, United Kingdom - March 22, 2017 - Blackmagic Design today announced that Creative Technology (CT), one of the world’s leading rental and event staging specialists, has equipped its infrastructure engineers with the Blackmagic Video Assist as part of their standard issue onsite testing kits.
CT supplies AV equipment and bespoke staging services to global sporting, corporate, exhibition and entertainment industries. Major recent projects have included events at the Rio Olympics and the UK’s Grand National horse race, as well as AV for international tours for artists such as Mariah Carey and Queen.
The Video Assist field monitor and recorder are used primarily for testing live production workflows, and as a video source at the early stages of rig construction, when other playback sources are not yet set up, according to Creative Technology’s director of Integrated Networks, Sid Lobb.
“Previously we had relied on a small stock of test pattern generators and used those in conjunction with a separate field monitor when carrying out signal testing,” Sid begins. “The Video Assist was an ideal replacement, not least because of the price point. It does both tasks, but now our engineers only have to carry a single, battery driven unit on them.”
He continues: “Its form factor, playback, and monitoring features, combined with HDSDI and HDMI connectivity, gives us an inexpensive, yet extremely practical piece of hardware for testing and monitoring in the field.” The Video Assist features a full 1920 x 1080 screen, HD recorder, and a down converter for monitoring and recording HD from Ultra HD sources.
Engineers from CT are now utilizing the Video Assists at live productions throughout Europe, including a recent brief at a car manufacturing facility in Germany. “Prior to our broadcast team arriving, the installation team was able to prove all of the lines we had set up to feed into our OB truck,” explains Sid. “However, when the truck arrived, its embedder was malforming the SDI signal. Using the Video Assists, we were able to prove that the system was passing clean video with embedded audio, enabling us to pinpoint the issue far quicker than we would have been able to previously.”
“The Video Assists have quickly become an essential element in our installation builds,” concludes Sid. “They are well priced and deliver fantastic quality and reliability for our engineers working under tight time constraints onsite.”
Press Photography
Product photos of Video Assist and all other Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com.
About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.
